It depends on the particular sport and the leagues involved, but most future professional players will play a couple years at the college level. High-school super stars in some sports may go into the professional league directly but it's uncommon. In many sports no matter your skill level you cannot build the physique necessary to compete until a bit later in life (american football for example). Also, some leagues have implemented rules designed to prevent direct recruitment from high school, notably the NBA.
There's typically no requirement to finish college however. It's relatively common for athletes to move up to the pros and skip the last years of their academics.
The US's system is mostly due to history, but the current structure continues because it is worth an extraordinary amount of money. The schools with top athletic teams bring in revenues of 100 million or more. The governing body for college athletics generally prohibits significant payments to the athletes themselves, so all that income goes to coaches and other staff, as well as supporting businesses. College coaches are usually the highest paid people on campus. This continues to be a bitter political topic, because many people see it as unfair that college athletes are generating so much money for everyone but themselves. The other side points out that allowing paid recruitment and player endorsement/advertising would have a corrupting effect as well as make it difficult for smaller schools to be competitive.
As far as I know, our system is unique, and that's probably because we were televising college athletics earlier and more heavily than other nations.
> As far as I know, our system is unique, and that's probably because we were televising college athletics earlier and more heavily than other nations.
It's not just that it's televised, it's that sports are tied to schools and colleges at all. Netherland has tons of youth sports, but all in indepdent, often volunteer-run clubs. For many sports (football and hockey[0] at least) there's a youth league for every two-year age group, and after the last one, when you're 18, you move to the adult leagues. Those are generally amateur leagues, but professional football clubs have their own youth programs (playing in the same leagues) and recruit from all clubs in the vicinity (not to mention rival clubs and foreign countries).
[0] And here I mean the football where a round ball is played with the foot, rather than American Football; and the hockey that's played on a field, rather than ice hockey.
The US has the same type of youth leagues that aren't affiliated with any school. I don't know of any non-school football leagues for kids older than 14 but most decent-sized cities have adult football leagues. For other sports like baseball, softball, soccer, tennis, etc, there are tons of non-school leagues for all ages.
However, unlike most public employees, they are always one or two bad seasons away from being fired.
A typical public sector job, particularly a university job, is almost the closest thing you can get to lifetime assured employment (most often at a salary that's not great, but with very good benefits and enormous amounts of paid time off).
Coaches though are much more accountable for their performance. If they don't win games, they get fired.
Edit: also it's only the head coaches of elite revenue-generating football and basketball programs that are very highly paid. The coaches of non-revenue sports have much more modest salaries.
Also unlike most public employees, they are typically entitle to massive buyout clauses if they are fired. For instance, UCLA's new men's basketball coach would be entitled to $10.4mm if he were fired prior to 2016.
Here in Indiana, for a couple of years in the early 2000s, the highest paid public "employee" was a basketball coach that had been fired, but was still getting paid according to his contract.
And, as public employees, they're often eligible for public pension programs, as well. Someone could coach for a couple of years and then spend the rest of their career as a janitor, but still retire with a 6 or 7 figure pension.
The general lack of interest in minor-league baseball also shows one reason why other sports aren't keen to move to that model (though the long history each sport has built up makes that kind of change pretty hard to do anyway).
From a marketing perspective, college sports are a minor league that comes with a built-in fanbase, the students & alumni at the universities (especially large universities). The top end of college sports teams are essentially the NFL's and NBA's minor league outfits, but compare how many fans and attention a Texas, Michigan, USC, Stanford, etc. game gets (in either football or basketball) to what a minor-league baseball team gets...
That is interesting. When the local third league football team plays, here in my part of Germany, the stadium is packed. I recently read a news report about how our local government is complaining that the police operation surrounding the game costs 100.000€ per game for that third league team.
When my university's football team plays a home game, there are usually 110,000 people in attendance. The streak of 100,000+ people for each home game goes back to 1975.
In terms of attendance, the top college teams beat even professional teams. The 13 largest stadiums in the US are all for college football [1]. You have to go all the way to number 14 before you get to a stadium used for professional sports.
Some of that is due to being older stadiums, though. U.S. professional stadiums used to have more capacity, because they were just rows and rows of bleachers. The trend in the past few decades in professional sports has been towards more of the space being used for lower-density "premium" seating like skyboxes and fewer bleachers, reducing the seat count. College sports usually have less funding for new stadiums though, and their market is a bit different (more regular fans paying out of pocket, less demand for corporate skyboxes). Hence you have something like the LA Coliseum, capacity 93,000, used by USC's college football team, but considered an "obsolete" stadium by the NFL and MLB, who used to use it but moved out.
It's not just college. Apparently sports are also a big part of high school, with money supporting a schools competitive team coming directly from the school budget.
That is simply not at all how it works here. You of course have sports education in school, but it is not competitive and you can't choose either.
Competitive high school sports are definitely part of American culture. Though most teams are not fully-funded by the school system, they have to fund-raise and/or pay fees as well. Coaches are usually also teachers at the school, though this is not always the case.
>The governing body for college athletics generally prohibits significant payments to the athletes themselves, so all that income goes to coaches and other staff, as well as supporting businesses.
There's typically no requirement to finish college however. It's relatively common for athletes to move up to the pros and skip the last years of their academics.
The US's system is mostly due to history, but the current structure continues because it is worth an extraordinary amount of money. The schools with top athletic teams bring in revenues of 100 million or more. The governing body for college athletics generally prohibits significant payments to the athletes themselves, so all that income goes to coaches and other staff, as well as supporting businesses. College coaches are usually the highest paid people on campus. This continues to be a bitter political topic, because many people see it as unfair that college athletes are generating so much money for everyone but themselves. The other side points out that allowing paid recruitment and player endorsement/advertising would have a corrupting effect as well as make it difficult for smaller schools to be competitive.
As far as I know, our system is unique, and that's probably because we were televising college athletics earlier and more heavily than other nations.